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Yeasayer – Rumsey Playfield – September 12, 2012

Central Park! Yeasayer! Beautiful September weather! Babies! Put all these things together (OK, well, except for the babies) and you’ve got the essential ingredients for a perfect show to usher out the summer outdoor-concert season. Wednesday night was the final stop of Yeasayer’s tour promoting the release of their latest album, Fragrant World . Their tour is being cut short thanks to the birth of Yeasayer mult-instrumentalist Anand Wilder’s new baby daughter, who was born on Saturday. The guys in the band welcomed the good news like the baby was all of theirs. Chris Keating joked several times throughout the set that they were returning to their hometown, New York City, to raise the newborn as a group.

When it comes to all the bands that have come out of the mid-aughts, Yeasayser’s a bit of an outlier. In many ways, their songs sound like a grab-bag collection of familiar sounds that have come into vogue as of late. Tunes both new and old dabble in the psychedelic, hypnotic grooves from the school of Animal Collective. Songs like their latest single, “Henrietta,” seamlessly morph from MGMT-style electro dance grooves to M83-style synth sentimentalism. With three of the four band members swapping vocal responsibilities, sometimes they all sang together like in the breakout from their debut, “2080,” building up an epic wall of harmonies reminiscent of the Fleet Foxes.

Individually these things aren’t necessarily unique, but throw them all together and you’ve got one of the most original and strangest sounding bands to emerge from the new millennium’s indie renaissance. And then of course there is “Ambling Alp,” the show ender and clear crowd favorite. Sung in unison, the lyrics from the song felt like some perfect and timely advice for someone new to this world. What an appropriate way to conclude a tour cut short by the birth of child. —Dan Rickershauser

Yeasayer (core members: Chris Keating on keys and vocals, Anand Wilder on guitars, keys and vocals, and Ira Wolf Tuton on bass and backing vocals) formed in 2006 and began to gain attention the following year with the release of All Hour Cymbals. But things really began to blow up for the Brooklyn experimental rockers when their second album, Odd Blood, came out in 2010. Sometimes it’s difficult to follow up such a successful album with another one, but that’s just what Yeasayer (above, playing “Longevity”) have done with this year’s Fragrant World (stream “Henrietta,” below). The Los Angeles Times calls it “their most synthetic record yet, and while it’s impossible to tell how much was played live, prerecorded or somewhere in between, the fact that Yeasayer obscured its mechanics while remaining an absolute party band is a major accomplishment.” Last month they celebrated its release with a show at Music Hall of Williamsburg that streamed live on The Bowery Presents Live. (Watch nine songs from that show.) See them, with Tanlines and Daedelus, tomorrow night at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park. It’s supposed to be a gorgeous late-summer night.